PROV-O comments

Hello,

Just a few comments on PROV-O (as downloaded yesterday), nothing
blocking release as FPWD. Apologies if these have already been raised
in others' comments.

Are figures going to be updated to use Activity rather
ProcessExecution before release? Or text reverted to use
ProcessExecution? If neither, it would be helpful for readers if
there's a clear note to say they are equivalent, perhaps at the start
of Section 3.1 where ProcessExecution first appears (in the figure).

The definitions of wasDerivedFrom and wasEventuallyDerivedFrom
(Sections 3.2.3, 3.2.4) are incorrect (according to the DM, either
past or present). wasDerivedFrom is not specific enough: it should be
tied to one activity. wasEventuallyDerivedFrom (now wasBasedOn) might
mean use/generation by a single activity, or might be more, it just is
not specified.

Similarly, the table in Section 3.3 is incorrect for wasDerivedFrom:
it is not (and never has been, I think) transitive.

Maybe a philosophical point, but is an Instant, as referred to in Sec
3.1.4 and subclassed to Time in 3.1.10.1, really helpful in provenance
data? It is defined as having "no interior points", but can one
asserter ever know that what they refer to as an instant will not need
to be decomposed by a future asserter? If I decide that a second is
fine enough granularity and there will be no interior points, another
asserter may wish to say what a processor did in milliseconds during
that second, and so on. The definition of instant just seems to
contradict the idea of allowing multiple perspectives on the same past
activities and entities.

Just above the Section 4 title, "PRO-O" should be "PROV-O"

thanks,
Simon

-- 
Dr Simon Miles
Lecturer, Department of Informatics
Kings College London, WC2R 2LS, UK
+44 (0)20 7848 1166

Provenance in Agent-mediated Healthcare Systems:
http://eprints.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/1273/

Received on Thursday, 24 November 2011 15:12:45 UTC